


A Sense of Who You Are

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Series: Dog Tags [1]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: First Time, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-21
Updated: 2008-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The smell of helicopter fuel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sense of Who You Are

"Sandburg, do you still have my sweater?"

"The gray one with the stripes?"

"Yeah."

"In my dresser, man."

I went into Sandburg's room and began pawing through the dresser. As I  
opened the drawers, I inhaled, cataloguing the smell of his room. Clean  
laundry, the scent of beeswax candles, the faint trace of his deodorant,  
the dry smell of the books that lay in piles around the room. And Blair  
himself, invading everything in that space with his scent: shampoo and soap  
and sweat, with just an edge of sex to it. Blair, I thought ruefully,  
couldn't *not* smell like sex if he tried. Even when he was going through  
one of his companionless phases, I could smell the sex on him, in him,  
around him. He carried it with him--the scent of a healthy male animal.  
It drove me half-crazy with desire, but he never seemed to notice my  
reaction.

Probably just as well. Sex would change everything--it always did. I'd  
ruined more friendships that way than I cared to count.

I found my sweater in the bottom drawer, and when I pulled it out, I heard  
metal chink softly to the floor. I looked down to see a pair of military  
dog tags, and bent to pick them up.

And I felt my breath catch. I'd thought that maybe they were a family  
heirloom, or maybe a fashion thing--I'd seen kids wearing tags on the  
street. But these weren't. These were the genuine article, and they were  
Blair's. I could smell the scent of oil and helicopter fuel clinging to  
the metal, over and around the smell of Blair. I rubbed my fingers over  
them, and then took them with me into the living room.

"Hey."

"You find it?"

"Yeah."

He looked up at me, and I saw worry flash across his face. "Hey, man, you  
OK?"

I held out the dog tags. "Blair--" He looked from the tags to my face, but  
didn't respond. Finally, I said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

He smiled then, very softly. "I've mentioned it before," he said.

"No, you haven't."

"Sure I have. When Kincaid had me in that chopper, and I told the pilot  
I'd flown Apaches in Desert Storm. I know you heard that, Jim."

"I thought you were...I don't know. Obfuscating."

"Nope." The smile grew broader. "I never told Naomi, so please don't do  
it for me, OK?"

I sat down next to him on the couch and looked at him, wondering why he'd  
never told me this. I knew why he'd never told Naomi--she would have had a  
million heart attacks--but why keep this from me? He smiled at me again,  
and took the tags from my hand. "I never saw combat, Jim. I maintained  
them, and I flew them to check out systems, but that's it."

"Still. It doesn't seem like you. I mean...you're..."

"I'm what?"

"I don't know." I shrugged and looked away.

"Jim," he said, gently, "didn't I ever seem awfully competent with guns for  
someone who didn't own one?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"Well, maybe you should have." He rubbed his forehead and frowned at me.  
"I've never had to shoot a person. I hope I never have to. And you know  
I'm for gun control. But I do know how to use them, and I'm actually  
fairly good with them."

"But you're--I don't know. Nonviolent."

"Jim, how much attention have you been paying to me? I have been known to  
seriously fuck people up since I've been working with you. I don't much  
like guns, and I prefer to use whatever's at hand, but where the hell did  
you get the idea I was nonviolent?"

I closed my hand over his, feeling the chain against my fingers where it  
looped over the back. "Did you believe in what you were doing?" I asked.

"Jim, I was maintaining helicopters. You don't have to believe in much of  
anything to do that." He sat back, moved away from me. "Did you?"

"I did. For a long time. And when I didn't anymore, I left."

His smile was sad. "Jim, what you went through--I had a walk in the park.  
How could I tell you? It wasn't anything like--well, like Peru."

"Sandburg--"

"Jim--" He turned his hand in mine and squeezed my fingers. "I did it  
because it was something I needed to do, something I had to understand. I  
was barely twenty-one when I finished my master's. I needed to do  
something different. So that's what I did. It was important to me, taught  
me a lot. And when it was over...I went back to school."

"So you learned that school was where you wanted to be."

"No. I learned that I didn't know who I was, and maybe I should stay  
somewhere out of the way until I found that out."

I looked down at our hands, at the fingers twisted together and the chain  
wrapped around them, digging into the flesh. "Did you ever find out? Who  
you are, I mean."

"Yes," he said.

"So, who are you? I mean, you're still at the university, so--"

"No." He grinned at me. "I'm at the university because it's convenient,  
Jim, and because I enjoy the work I do there. It has nothing to do with  
who I am."

"Who are you?"

"I'm your partner."

"What?"

"I'm your partner, Jim. That's who I am." I didn't reply, just stared at  
him. Whatever I'd been expecting, it wasn't that. After a moment, he  
shook our clasped hands, and the dangling tags jingled. "These tell you  
what I am, Jim, or part of it. These, my diploma, my birth certificate, my  
blood donor card, my driver's license. That's *what* I am. *Who* I am is  
a different matter entirely, man. Completely separate issues. I'm your  
partner."

"How is that any different from being--I don't know--Naomi's son?"

"I chose it, Jim. That's who I decided to be. Your partner,  
twenty-four/seven. It's what I do, it's what I think about, it's what I  
love, and it's who I am."

I moved closer to him, looking down into his face. Seated, he wasn't so  
much shorter than I was, and that made me feel better. We were more equal,  
seated. "You love being my partner?"

"Yeah."

"I'm glad," I said, and released his hand, feeling the chain slip from  
around my fingers. I stood up and stretched, and he held the tags out to  
me. "Could you go put these back, Jim? I don't feel like getting up."

I took them, feeling the warmth of his body lingering in the metal, and  
headed back into his bedroom to put them away. I placed them back in the  
dresser, and inhaled, letting the scent of him fill me, feeling the  
sharp-edged tang of sex call forth a response from my body. Vicarious  
enjoyment of him, the way every casual touch was a caress in disguise. As  
I walked back out into the living room, a thought occurred to me.

I'd once told Blair I didn't need him to define who I was, and yet here he  
was, defining himself by me. He said that's who he was: my partner. So  
who was I?

Who was Blair's partner? The sentinel of Cascade? Or just plain Jim  
Ellison? Whose partner was he? Both the sentinel and Jim were me, but  
which was a *what* and which was a *who*?

Did I know?

Did Blair?

The happiness that had filled me when he'd said he loved being my partner  
disappeared. I needed to know who I was to him. I needed...

I needed to find out how Blair felt about Jim Ellison, the man, and I had  
no idea how to do that. So. The easiest thing to do was ask him. I'd  
know if he lied to me, after all. I went back to the couch and sat down.  
"Hey."

"Hey." He was re-absorbed in his reading, and I shook him gently by the  
knee.

"Chief?"

"What is it?" He looked at me, his expression open and questioning. "You  
need to talk?"

"Yeah."

"So talk." He folded his hands and smiled at me, and I touched the back of  
the hand that had so recently had the chain around it. I could still feel  
the faint impressions on the skin.

"How do you feel about me?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"I mean...yeah, you're my partner, but are you only in this for the  
sentinel part of me, or what? I need to know how you feel. Who I am to  
you."

He shifted, tucking one of his legs under him. "Jim, who are you to you?"

I didn't answer.

"You told me that you knew. So who are you?"

"That was a long time ago, Sandburg."

He threw a couch pillow at me. "Jim, it was two months ago."

I still didn't answer.

And then his hand was on mine, skin to skin, his fingers firm and warm.  
"Is knowing who I think you are that important?"

"I just want to know." I said it casually, as if it didn't really matter.  
As if his answer wasn't the most important thing in the world. As if my  
universe hadn't narrowed to the touch of his skin and the sound of his  
voice.

A lifelong history of stoicism comes in handy when interrogating the man  
who could break your heart with one word. Not that I thought I could  
deceive him completely, but I could make him think it didn't matter nearly  
as much as it did. Who was I to him? If I was his friend, just plain Jim  
Ellison, first and foremost, I'd be happy.

Keep lying to yourself, Jimmy, you're good at it, I said to myself. I knew  
damn well that his friendship wasn't enough, but I could live with it.  
He'd told me that this wasn't just about my senses a long time ago; that  
friendship played a part, too. If that was what he still felt, I would go  
on. I'd believed him, hadn't I?

At the time, yes, but now?

Now, after Alex, after I'd thrown him out, told him I didn't trust him?

Now that I knew he defined himself as my partner?

Now that I knew I loved him and wanted him and, Christ Jesus, needed him  
like a junkie needs a fix?

I could feel the faint residue of oil and fuel from Blair's dog tags on my  
hand, some of it on my skin, some on his where it touched me. He slid his  
fingers between mine and held on, his pulse beating beneath his skin and  
the scent of him--so close to me--rising around us, the bleeding-edge taste  
of a man in his prime.

And Blair was in his prime. I'd studied him carefully over the years we'd  
been together. Strong, regular features; broad shoulders and chest; large  
square hands, the hands of the boy who'd driven a rig cross-country and  
wielded a blowtorch and maintained choppers for the Army, the hands of a  
man who gestured when he spoke and typed so quickly I could barely follow  
the movements.

Time was moving so slowly as I waited for his answer, drowning in the scent  
and feel of him.

"Jim," he said, finally, "I don't know why this matters to you, but I'll  
answer. I've chosen to be your partner. And I've made choices about who  
you are, too--choices you might not agree with."

I waited, feeling only the touch of his hand on mine. I prayed to a God I  
didn't believe in anymore, and I waited.

"You're the person I love, Jim. The person I want to stay with forever.  
That's who you are to me."

"Chief," I said, composing a prayer of thanks in my head, "can I kiss you?"

And then those strong hands of his, smelling faintly of helicopter fuel but  
mostly of Blair, were wrapped around me: one on my hip, and one behind my  
head. His beard stubble scraped my chin and I could feel the heat of his  
cock through his jeans as his knee pressed my legs apart. "Jesus," I  
whispered when he let my mouth go. "Jesus, Chief."

"No," he replied, "but he was a good Jewish boy, just like me." He  
scratched my chest lightly through my shirt.

"I don't think he made a practice of hitting on his disciples."

"Oh, come on. Think about it. Amber Larkin is Mary Magdalene, and you're  
the disciple Jesus loved. Don't you read your own religious books?"

"No, but you do, apparently." I ran my fingers over his cock, and he  
inhaled sharply. "Besides, wouldn't that make Naomi the Virgin Mary?"

"Don't overextend the metaphor," he said, and unzipped my pants. As they  
fell to the floor, followed by my boxers, I tried to remember if the Bible  
said anything about Jesus sucking anyone's brain out through their cock. I  
was pretty sure it didn't, but then, I'd never paid attention in Sunday  
school.

Later, as I lay shaking underneath him in his bed, feeling the aftershocks  
of orgasm throughout my body, he started to laugh. "What?" I asked,  
blinking up at him, the scent of both of us and of sex heavy in the air.

"The Second Coming," he said, and we laughed until our stomachs hurt. Then  
we abandoned his bed for mine, which was somewhat cleaner (seeing as how no  
one had gotten fucked silly in it--at least not yet), and curled up to go  
to sleep. Wrapped around him, I could still smell the faintest trace of  
helicopter fuel, a part of the path that had led Blair to who he was. And  
through him, to who I was.

His partner. The person he loved. Just plain Jim Ellison.

Tomorrow I was going to go back into that room and move all his clothes  
upstairs. And I was going to take a minute to hold those dog tags in my  
hand and thank God for Blair.

* * *

  
The End. 


End file.
